Taste
by Malachite Aoi
Summary: Passion so red it tasted like blood...or was it spaghetti? A feeling so sudden it was potent and green...like bile. If no other senses worked it was because their hearts were so hungry for a taste of what they could not have.


Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and its characters, places and events belong to Square-Enix and their respective intellectual copyright holders. I'm not doing this for/making any profit so don't sue. I'm just borrowing them.

A/N: One-shot to break me out of a writing rut. A dinner date at the Gold Saucer between Cloud and Yuffie. One-sided Clouffie. As for the end, you take a guess.

"You don't eat much, do you?"

The shifty little ninja stared up at Cloud, her eyes full of curiosity; her mouth half-full of mashed potatoes.

"..."

By this point in time she was already used to the taciturn nature of the blonde leader of their little group. However quiet he might be, he still couldn't fend off Yuffie's most concentrated attempts to get him to loosen up.

"When this is all over, do ya think we'll all still be friends?"

"...Maybe. If we're still alive."

Even though the answer was morbid and his tone of voice morose, she still couldn't help but beam at his answer. She honestly believed that anything he said was good enough because his words were few and far between.

"Will you still be my friend? -- I mean, if we're all still alive, of course."

Cloud didn't bother responding, his striking blue eyes simply looking right through her. After a few minutes of silence she let out a disappointed sigh.

"Look, if this is about that incident with the materia..."

"It's not."

"It...it isn't?"

"No. I may not agree with the way you went about your business, but I understand why you did what you did."

Turning his gaze back down to the bowl of spaghetti in front of him, he twirled another forkful and shoveled it into his mouth. A few specks of tomato sauce sprayed across his face, giving his chin and cheeks a healthy smattering of bright red freckles.

"Eew. You've got sauce all over your face."

Cloud didn't even raise his eyes as he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, successfully managing to smear the sauce stains, but not clean them off.

With an uncharacteristic calmness and gentleness, Yuffie reached over the table, napkin in hand, and wiped at the smudges on his face. He looked up at her, a little surprised by her actions, and a little jolted by the physical contact.

"Where is everyone else anyway?"

Cloud took a quick glance around them but didn't see a face he recognized – save hers. It wasn't necessarily that he minded her being around; after all, solitude was beginning to make him increasingly uneasy after months of traveling with such a large group. It was just that he wasn't used to being around her – _alone_.

"I'm not sure. Why? Does it make you uncomfortable to be hangin' out with me alone? Maybe someone has a crush on the greatest ninja of all time!"

Despite his best efforts, he had to try hard to bite back a smile.

"A great ninja? Who would that be?"

"Me, you dolt!"

Feeling a bit stung by the jab she flung a spoonful of mashed potatoes at the blonde. It was so rare that he joked she wasn't aware that he had just been messing with her.

Calmly wiping the mashed potatoes off of his face, he refrained from retaliating and instead went back to eating his dinner. He didn't exactly like the taste of potatoes and spaghetti, but he supposed he could deal with it. Thinking about all those days as a grunt in SOLDIER he knew that he'd had much worse.

Noticing that the cool blonde was in no mood to fire back, her grin of anticipation soon melted into a pout.

"Aw, you're no fun. You were s'posedta throw somethin' back at me!"

He glanced up at her for just a second, his electric blue eyes sending an inexplicable shock through her before he shrugged and returned his gaze to his food.

Giving up the young ninja pushed her chair back and crossed her arms over her chest, deeply affronted at the lack of response. She would have taken anything – even an unkind word – over this searing silence. She didn't like the quiet and it was making her uneasy.

It wasn't long before Cloud put his fork down and stopped poking at his half-eaten dinner. He hadn't had much of an appetite after all the things that had gone down since he started this journey. He never would have guessed that one simple mission would turn into two; that two missions would explode into a race to save the planet. He never would have dreamed that a race to save the planet would turn into an all too-quiet dinner with a hyperactive ninja.

After the check had been paid and the table cleared the odd pair found themselves outside waiting for the roar of an airship – Cid's airship, to break the uncomfortable silence between them. Between the span of ten and a hundred baited breaths the metal behemoth finally came in view, hovering ominously above them before descending to the ground. With the engines still roaring loud enough to rend their eardrums they approached to board.

Yuffie couldn't tell if it was the rumbling of the massive vehicle or the nervous thumping of her heart that was causing her teeth to chatter as she quickly swung around to face the blonde behind her.

Abruptly, she hopped and rammed the lower half of her face into the lower half of his and she could have sworn that she'd gnashed their mouths together so fiercely that there was the taste of blood on her tongue.

Cloud, though startled and confused neither kissed her back nor pulled away, only his eyes betraying the surprise and the incomprehensible rush of feelings that were swimming through him.

He would never know if it had been because of the petite woman's impromptu affection or the pent up flood of emotions that had been welled up inside of him for so long, but a jumble of tangled feelings forced his eyes closed, still neither confirming or denying any enjoyment on his part. He thought there was some tangy metal on his tongue but he couldn't be sure.

She pulled away and smiled at him, dashing up the stairs of the Highwind.

Her taste buds exploded with the salt of what she thought was blood, mashed potatoes and spaghetti.

On the deck above a figure stood in the shadows, long hair billowing in the wind. They had only seen the scene below and yet a flavor struck them too...

Green and bitter like the jealousy that suddenly bubbled up --

It was bile.


End file.
